OUR MISSION

This research agenda aims to create alternative, innovative, and comprehensive measures of educational quality (academic rigor, teaching quality, and learning objectives) across institutions that could contribute to public understanding of college and university quality. The current ways of measuring educational quality across institutions (testing, surveys, accreditation, performance metrics) have had unintended consequences, such as grade inflation, mission creep, the manipulation of institutional data, and the focus on collecting information that is easily quantifiable (graduation rates, for example) rather than less easily quantifiable indicators of educational quality. Higher education stakeholders need to see educational quality from multiple vantage points that get to the heart of the educational enterprise of institutions in order to make improved decisions.This project is supported by the Teachers College Provost's Investment Fund.Teachers College Columbia University